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Greatest Music Quotes Of The 1980s #3: Bob Geldof Special

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It’s fair to say that Bob Geldof’s efforts to kickstart Band Aid (‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’), USA For Africa (‘We Are The World’) and Live Aid were full of tension, drama and bruised egos.

And as each year goes by, more stories are coming out about that 1984/1985 era (many feature in the superb recent doc ‘The Greatest Night In Pop’ and Paul Vallely’s book ‘Live Aid: The Definitive 40-Year Story’), and more and more it seems like it was a watershed time for 1980s pop.

There are sundry tales of managers trying to get their artists higher up the bill at Live Aid (and trying in vain to get soundchecks…), egos running wild (especially in the USA), but also gratifying tales of altruism and friendship.

So a lot of people had a lot of entertaining things to say. Here are some choice quotes from the era, with a cast of characters including Geldof, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Diana Ross and Paul Simon.

‘It sounds like f*cking “Z Cars”.’
Bob Geldof upon first hearing Midge Ure’s ‘Christmas’ synth melody in the middle of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’

‘You’re a f*cking millionaire and you want free food? There’s a f*cking chip shop on the corner. Go and buy your own lunch.’
Bob Geldof’s response to a star asking if there would be catering during the recording at Sarm West in Notting Hill

‘A huge voice erupted out of this little guy. I was standing next to Bono and I jumped. It felt as if I was standing next to an opera singer. He had the same massive power.’
Midge Ure on hearing Bono’s ‘Well, tonight thank God it’s them instead of you!’ line

‘I can’t go until I see Phil Collins play.’
Culture Club’s Jon Moss explaining why he was hanging around for so long in the studio

‘It’s pathetic but the price of a life this year is a piece of plastic with a hole in the middle.’
Bob Geldof tells Radio 1 DJ Simon Bates why people should buy the single

‘It’s really great what you’re doing. We want to do that over here. Will you come over?’
Michael Jackson rings Geldof from LA

‘It was a slap in the face. I know she felt bad. They didn’t think she could sing. It broke her heart.’ Nile Rodgers on Madonna not getting an invite for ‘We Are The World’

‘That’s like the Statue Of Liberty walking in.’
Billy Joel watches Ray Charles entering A&M Studios

‘Daryl, I’m your biggest fan. Would you sign my music for me?’
Diana Ross to Daryl Hall during the recording

‘Say what?! It’s three o’clock in the goddamn mornin’ – I can’t even sing in English no mo’! Ring the bell, Quincy, ring the bell!’
Ray Charles loses patience with Stevie Wonder’s attempts to teach the assembled vocalists a Swahili chant

‘That wasn’t any good.’
Bob Dylan after the vocal take that producer Quincy Jones deemed the keeper

‘Nice, Dylan.’
Bruce Springsteen to Bob after the aforementioned take

‘If it all goes well, no one will ever hear about you. If it’s a disaster, you’ll be famous.’
Harvey Goldsmith’s final words to Live Aid band organiser Pete Smith at the end of his interview

‘Oh Bobsy, I’m not so sure. I just don’t think it’s the right thing for us.’
Freddie Mercury’s initial response to Geldof about Queen playing at Live Aid

‘Is Geldof involved? I’m only doing the Geldof thing.’
David Bowie to his PR Bernard Doherty after getting TWO invitations to do charity work in 1985

‘You’ll never get Keith to agree. Cos Keith don’t give a f*ck.’
Bill Wyman to Geldof on his chances of getting the Stones together for Live Aid

‘Bob picked the wrong year, the wrong decade actually, to ask the Rolling Stones to do anything.’
Bernard Doherty on getting the Stones to appear

‘I took the idea from the television programme “Sunday Night At The London Palladium” which had a revolving stage at the end with all the performers of that week saying goodbye.’
Bob Geldof on the Live Aid revolving stage

‘I’ll do it. But Roger (Daltrey) will only do it if Kenney (Jones) doesn’t play. And John (Entwistle) will only do it if Kenney DOES play.’
Pete Townshend to Geldof on getting The Who back together for Live Aid – Kenney Jones had been their drummer since the death of Keith Moon

‘If The Who appear, we know we will get an additional million pounds of revenue. Every pound we make will save a life. Please, Roger, do the f*cking show.’
Bob Geldof pleads with Daltrey to do Live Aid – he did, and Kenney did appear on drums

‘Well, pull out, dude. You announce it, though.’
Bob Geldof to Bryan Ferry who was angry that he had been announced for Live Aid without even agreeing to participate

‘Oh f*ck. I didn’t think you could actually fix that!’
Phil Collins’ manager Tony Smith on being told by Geldof that Phil would play in both London and Philadelphia (he would also drum with Led Zeppelin at the latter gig)

‘We had this unbelievable discussion with Michael Jackson’s people. We were saying this is to help people in Africa and he just wasn’t interested.’
Harvey Goldsmith on trying to get Jackson to play Live Aid

‘They couldn’t give a f*ck, Bob.’
Quincy Jones whispers to Geldof his summation of why Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Prince and Stevie Wonder failed to appear at Live Aid

‘Call NASA, Harvey!’
Bob Geldof to Harvey Goldsmith, getting excited about sending Mick Jagger up in a space shuttle to duet with Bowie at Wembley

‘Sorry, sir. It takes six months for us to plan to do something like that.’
The man from NASA – he say no…

‘The Beatles can’t be reformed. John is dead.’
Bob Geldof kiboshes rumours that he’s been trying to reform The Beatles for Live Aid

‘I don’t care how many songs you want me to do, but I’m giving up one to introduce this on stage or I’m not doing the show.’
David Bowie on the CBC video which married harrowing images of starving Ethiopians with The Cars’ ‘Drive’

‘I thought: either I’ve done something really clever or really stupid…’
CBC’s Colin Dean on his edit of the above-mentioned video

‘I’m not going to have someone like Bill Graham talk to me in the way he’s talking to me. I won’t work with this guy. I’m sorry.’
Paul Simon tells Geldof why he’s pulling out of Live Aid

‘I’ve been on tour forever. We’ve just got married and if I don’t give her a honeymoon, then it’ll be a divorce!’
Bruce Springsteen tells Geldof why he won’t play Live Aid

‘Well, f*cking pull out. No one’s getting a soundcheck. I’m going back to bed.’
Bob Geldof to U2 manager Paul McGuinness on the eve of Live Aid – the latter had threatened to withdraw U2 if they didn’t get a soundcheck

‘I don’t think I can do this. It’s been six years since I’ve done anything.’
Paul McCartney has a crisis in the car on the way to Live Aid – his wife’s response was: ‘Shut up. You’re doing it.’

‘She asked me whether I could get her on. I told her to just turn up.’
Phil Collins remembers meeting Cher on the Concorde during his flight from London to Philadelphia

‘I have terrible memories of it all going wrong. Poor David (Gilmour), his guitar wasn’t working for the first couple of songs. With his first hit, the drummer put his stick through the drum skin. Then my mic wasn’t working, which for a singer is a bit of a handicap. A roadie ran on with another mic, so then I was holding two mics taped together and I wasn’t really sure which one to sing into.’
Bryan Ferry looks back on his Live Aid performance

‘Looking back, I think we were all a bit overexcited and I remember coming off and thinking it was very scrappy.’
Brian May on Queen’s performance

‘Queen were absolutely the best band of the day.’
Bob Geldof

‘I walked in and just stood there, and we looked at each other and he burst into tears. I’ve never seen him do that, before or since.’
Bernard Doherty on David Bowie after his Live Aid performance

‘He wouldn’t let go of my hand. He said, “You’re that lovely boy from Boomtown Rats, aren’t you?” I said, “No, I’m the lovely boy from Ultravox…”’
Midge Ure on Freddie Mercury at Live Aid

‘I ain’t taking shit off today. You might hold it against me ten years from now…’
Madonna to the Philadelphia crowd – pre-fame topless photos had just been published in the newspapers

‘No, it doesn’t go like that!’
Jimmy Page to Phil Collins backstage at Philadelphia before performing with Led Zeppelin – he had requested that Collins play air drums through ‘Stairway To Heaven’ to prove that he knew the song

‘The whole thing was a disaster, really. Robert wasn’t match-fit with his voice and Jimmy was out of it, dribbling. If I could have walked off, I would have.’
Phil Collins on playing with Led Zeppelin

‘She came out and literally blew the console apart!’
Philadelphia monitor man Dave Skaff on Patti Labelle’s performance at Live Aid

‘This is your Woodstock, and it’s long overdue…’
Joan Baez to the Philadelphia crowd

Story Of A Song: Queen/David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ (1981)

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In the immediate aftermath of Bowie’s fabled appearance in the Broadway production of ‘The Elephant Man’, and despite the commercial success of the Scary Monsters album, at least in the UK, his thoughts were far from music in early 1981.

The sorts of modern nightmares he had sung about on ‘It’s No Game’ were becoming all too real. He was particularly shaken by the death of his friend John Lennon in December 1980.

It was time for a reassessment and reboot. First to go was a proposed world tour, originally pencilled in for summer 1981. Instead, Switzerland seemed as good a place as any to hide out, at least initially.

In July, Bowie was at Montreux’s Mountain Studios, recording his vocals for the ‘Cat People’ movie theme song with co-producer/co-writer Giorgio Moroder.

Queen were in an adjacent room recording the Hot Space album, and, when Bowie popped in to say hello to their drummer Roger Taylor, a long-overdue collaboration was on the cards (Bowie was also keen to bend Freddie Mercury’s ear about Queen’s label EMI, as he was pretty desperate to get off RCA).

It was apparently no walk in the park for either party though: guitarist Brian May recalled that ‘to have his ego mixed with ours made for a very volatile mixture’ while Taylor also confirmed that ‘certain egos were slightly bruised along the way’.

But the blend of personalities and approaches paid off; in a feverish, booze-fuelled few hours, described by engineer/co-producer David Richards as ‘a complete jam session and madness in the studio’, something started happening.

With Bowie running between piano and 12-string guitar (his D-based chordal concept is not dissimilar to David Gilmour’s work on Pink Floyd’s contemporaneous ‘Run Like Hell’), a groove, melody and basic song structure emerged.

Bowie encouraged Mercury to improvise on the microphone – apparently the latter’s wordless ad-libs were only meant as placeholders, to be replaced with real lyrics, but they were left in when no-one could think of anything better.

Bowie reportedly then ‘comped’ both vocal improvisations to give them something to build upon, and then lyrics were considered. The nascent song was initially titled ‘People On Streets’, but Bowie’s push to call it ‘Under Pressure’ led to the emergence of a more focused composition.

It’s a fascinating snapshot of Bowie and Mercury’s vocal styles. Bowie struggles with Queen’s natural tendency to break out the pomp-rock but he reins it back in with the moving, double-tracked ‘This is our last dance’ section.

It’s also instructive to hear his vocal mastery during the section; close listening reveals that he takes short, deep breaths at exactly the same points throughout, demonstrating that the part was meticulously worked out in advance.

It’s also impressive that neither Mercury nor Bowie ever ‘pop’ the microphone in their delivery of the word ‘Pressure’ – no mean feat.

Still, it’s quite a bold song lyrically. There aren’t many #1 singles with lines like ‘It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about/Watching some good friends scream let me out’.

It’s not surprising Bowie’s mind was on the healing nature of love in 1981. It’s possible the song was a reaction to the street uprisings going on throughout the UK during spring and summer. The result is a kind of ‘Heroes’ for the early 1980s. Also it’s possibly a prelude to his involvement with Band Aid/Live Aid later in the decade.

It’s also worth noting that Bowie’s infamous Lord’s Prayer at the 1992 Freddie tribute concert at Wembley Stadium took place soon after his performance of ‘Under Pressure’ in duet with Annie Lennox.

The track was mixed in New York by Queen alone without any input from Bowie, a decision that apparently divided opinion; Taylor considered it ‘one of the best things Queen have ever done’ while Bowie surmised that ‘it was done so quickly that some of it makes me cringe a bit.’ It’s certainly far from a hi-fidelity recording.

EMI were understandably convinced ‘Under Pressure’ was a hit, Bowie and Queen less so. But it entered the UK charts at #8 40 years ago this week, and then summarily knocked The Police’s ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ off the top spot on 15 November, staying at #1 for two weeks.

In the US,  it reached #29, not particularly impressive but nonetheless Bowie’s best chart placing since ‘Golden Years’ almost six years before.

David Mallet’s clever video used stock/public domain footage to interesting effect, though it was banned by the BBC (though I definitely remember seeing it on telly at the time) for including a few seconds of footage from an IRA bomb in Belfast.

As for Bowie, he quickly moved on to the filming of Alan Clarke’s excellent TV play ‘Baal’ in August 1981, rounding off an interesting year for him.

On a personal level, I recall that November 1981 was exactly the time when the pop music bug really got me. I can remember where I was when I first heard ‘Under Pressure’, and many tracks from that month’s chart hold a special place in my heart to this day.

Further reading: ‘Ashes To Ashes’ by Chris O’Leary

‘The Complete David Bowie’ by Nicholas Pegg